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This was most confusing thing to me. On the first day at the plant, I asked at the entrance the directions to office I had to go. He told me to drive straight, turn left from second robot, continue till I cross rail track, turn right from first robot and then there is visitor parking on right. I was amazed that there are robots walking around in the plant (like they show in movies). I did not see a single robot and was lost in the plant for about 15 minutes.

reCaptcha is consistently rubbish, as far as I can tell. Either that or I'm an automaton. (I hate that, for one thing, it's American and assumes we all know exactly what a fire hydrant looks like. In the UK fire hydrants are neatly hidden away under covers in the ground).

Some years ago I spent half an hour writing a captcha routine in vb.net that colours and distorts text; but using characters that are not easily confused (so I don't use I l 1, 0 or O etc) and easily configurable as to the extent of distortion. Works well and I use it on most of my sites. I'd do an article on it but, on second thoughts, I'll wait until it dominates the world and then start charging for it...

I won't argue against that, because degradation of the reef is having hideous effects on just about everything in the region, but if you don't figure out what side-effects it could have before you start, it may be too late to figure out what to do about them after the effect.

Well the article is clear that's not what they're doing; they're whitening the existing clouds. It has no impact (in theory) on the level of cloud cover. However I suspect it may make the rain fall (when it does eventually) as sea water, and if it does that over land, they may find they end up helping the coral but desertifying the land. Given the very very small effect that they can be expecting, one also has to wonder whether the negative environmental effects of mining / extracting the salt, transporting the salt, running the turbine (and extracting / transporting the fuel for the turbine(s)) may not massively outweigh the benefits.

On a slightly different topic, here in the UK we've had three weeks of largely unbroken sunshine (though rain is forecast for this afternoon). For a month traditionally associated with showers, that's very odd and I suspect part of the reason is the almost total absence of aircraft contrails. I saw one yesterday and, with little breeze, it was still clearly visible 15 minutes later but spread out over a wide arc of the sky. Given we normally get several high-altitude aircraft crossing over per minute, the overall impact on cloud cover must be considerable. In global warming terms, those clouds are acting as a blanket by night. I do hope someone is doing some serious (home-based) research to see if the effects are statistically significant.

From the moment the contagion was announced (Jan 3rd, only 44 cases, and before anyone had even died from it -- and the same day China formally informed the US about it) just about everyone in China was wearing a mask.

The idea that a mask will protect you is not nonsense, but it's close. Wearing a mask stutters the spread by protecting everyone else, but anti-maskers only shouted about the not-quite-nonsense bit.

As far as I understood Our Great Leader last night, any sort of restrictions would be lifted shortly.

It will surely be done stepwise, so that the virus gets a chance to get out again. That gives Our Great Leader a new chance to once again show his great power to give away new billions of dollars to businesses threatened by the new outbreak to cope with the situation.

I guess I am not the only one thinking that the contestant may be smart not wasting his resources this time. Let those who allowed the mess to develop do the cleanup first. The cleanup will last far beyond November, maybe several years.

A staged "re-opening" is the only way to go, so it's clear that the certain-coloured guy you mention has suppressed his vaunted instincts and listened to experts on this, but it has to be made clear to everyone that they should be prepared for entire cities to be locked down again with very short notice, if cases surge.

Be aware, though, that he's not the only national leader whose response has been, shall we say "sub-optimal" (or maybe "sub-par" would be more appropriate/biting), and he's not even the worst.

... But he's by far the most entertaining (which, curiously, appears to be one of his objectives).

Being a high-risk person, because of underlying lung problems (which don't affect me day-to-day, but would sure as sugar be best pals with covid-19), I'm wishing I lived in New Zealand or China. Their leadership has been much more effective in saving lives.

Being a high-risk person, because of underlying lung problems (which don't affect me day-to-day, but would sure as sugar be best pals with covid-19), I'm wishing I lived in New Zealand or China. Their leadership has been much more effective in saving lives.

Why do these normally interesting discussions have to devolve into insane utter nonsensical political blame games? I could not care less about your opinion of "Our Great Leader" or some "certain colored person" or any other stupidity spilling out of your mouth. Stick to the meat of the topics snowflakes! Or move to those countries that you think are so much better.